Hearthpwn

also have you ever wondered why the "most oppressive" decks in hearthstone only have a 55% winrate? it just happened that every single deck in the history of the game is near 50%? given the wide variety of player skill, deck formulas, and all the other factors, it truly is mindboggling that 50% is somehow the magic number. its almost like skill doesnt matter, 50% does... :)

I just don't think that's that unlikely an outcome without the idea that there's a hypothetical "deck rating" being applied to all levels of matchmaking.  There are a bunch of effects that tend to balance things out without that:

• Blizzard's design has leaned toward multiple viable archetypes which tend to be either extremely strong or extremely weak against each other.  Thus, if one archetype seems to be dominating (Jade Druid in the first few days of this expansion) a large number of players will gravitate to its obvious counters REALLY FAST, countering its dominance.
• Their long development cycle probably allows Team 5 to catch really broken mechanics and card combinations (the ones that would make one archetype truly dominant) before they go out the door in most cases.
• While Ranked rating doesn't resemble an MMR system, a matchmaking system that prioritizes same-rank matches above all else will tend to bias results heavily toward 50%.  Those who perform better than the current rank (on average) rapidly move up and out, and get matched with a new population, while those who underperform stay where they are or drop.  Only a 50% win rate keeps people at the same rank, so ranks will quickly be stratified by performance to get the win rate as close to 50% as possible (though with an overall upward migration driven by rank floors canceling out losses and bonus stars.)

The hsreplay.net people probably could come up with a way to test what you're proposing.  It would be great if they would.  I'm not saying I know for certain you're wrong, I'm just saying that "change your deck and see what happens over the next 20 games" is a REALLY bad test unless it's such an overwhelming effect that adding blah blah card means you only see hunters, ever, every single time.  And, I doubt they're doing something that coarse and unhelpful.

the worst thing he could possibly do is pull out his wallet and buy dust wads until he can make a jade druid, etc...

I agree in general (although I do think that there's some value in spending dust to build one relatively strong deck of some kind just to have the good feedback of some ladder success, preferably an archetype that's shown some long-term viability and isn't dependent on specific cards that are going to age out at the next Standard update.)

Quote from Matrix801 >>

Quote from Lysenko >>

There's no good way to build a system that does what you describe.  You're imagining things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 No, he is right, he may be exaggerating, but there is more to the matchmaker than current rank and stars.  If you don't have the formula then picking winners and losers will average out over the population and appear random, but there are undoubtedly 'factors' involved in the match engine.

Quote from Stubblestubble >>

^ sure, dude, its not like i track my data or anything...

There's no good way to build a system that does what you describe.  You're imagining things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Quote from Stubblestubble >>

^ I made the deck that specific way to work around the matchmaking system. its extremely rare that it will que into hunters shamans or rogues. 

Quote from Maukiepaukie >>

You don't need to be skilled to get legend. You just need to be willing to invest some time

I wound up back at the bottom of rank 5 at least twice in the season I made Legend.  Just focus on learning your deck better and improving your play, and play as much as you can.

Quote from Firestorm30 >>

i stopped buying them and began getting gadgetzan and old gods packs. I do own the karazhan adventure(i do invest a little bit now and then), but i have no idea how and what to invest in to make it worth. 

I've spent a lot of money on Hearthstone on NA, but for a while I was playing entirely f2p on Europe just to see how quickly I could get myself to a competitive level.

If you're just starting out, your first goal really should be to have a playable basic/classic deck of every class.  Trump's basic decks are pretty reasonable just as a starting point, and as you get more cards you can swap out for them.  His basic decks are here:  https://sites.google.com/site/trumpdecks/basicdecks

You should first strive to get all your classes up to level 10 so you have all the basic (free) cards.  This will also earn you some gold and a bunch of packs.  I would then put as much gold as possible into classic packs for a while, since those cards are (mostly) always going to be in Standard.

Your main goal should be to complete your quests every day to maximize your gold accumulation.  (You'll find this easiest in Casual mode, because you'll very shortly end up facing other people with basic decks due to how matchmaking works in that mode.)  At least at first, only auto-dust your excess duplicates, don't dust cards individually.  Just keep accumulating gold and dumping it into classic packs and trying to improve your decks for each class wherever possible.

Once you start accumulating dust from duplicates only, maybe a couple thousand, start looking at the inexpensive competitive decks that EveningWood mentions above.  Your goal should be to have a single fairly competitive deck of your choice, and in addition a playable basic-level deck for each class so you can keep pressing ahead on quests.

When you are putting together your competitive deck, note that some cards you'll want to craft will require completing at least some of the solo adventure content.  You'll need to save up gold to unlock this, or get out your credit card.  I think only One Night in Karazhan is still in Standard.  The advantage of spending gold on this content is that it has a 100% chance of awarding you a full set of some very good cards that you cannot get any other way.

Good luck!  A few seasons ago, when midrange hunter was doing just a bit better, I had a legend-viable competitive deck put together on my f2p account within a few weeks.  Midrange hunter isn't quite as good now but it still does pretty well up through rank 15, and if you hit that every season, plus do your dailies, you'll be in very good shape to grow your collection.

Another reason (and after some thought I think this reason is functionally equivalent to Kibler's) is that if you nerf a card, you make all the other cards that could take its place in a deck more valuable, but if you buff a card, you put the focus on that one card, to the exclusion of others, even out of proportion to the buff.  In other words, nerfing a card provides many options but buffing a card puts undue focus on that card, archetypes that benefit from it, and responses to it.  I don't believe the designers want to steer the meta toward single solutions like that.

Nerfing a card requires making a decision that a particular deck or play style has spun out of control, which can happen.  Buffing a card requires making a decision that what the game needs right now are not all the other options out there, but an emphasis on this one particular way to play (which many players may not have the cards for or be interested in playing.)  It's just hard to see why the game designers would think to themselves "ok what Hearthstone really needs right now is a lot more people playing quest paladin decks."

Even in a case like Warlock's current state, a single card buff is unlikely to do the job, and if it did, it would leave the class in a very narrow and fragile state.  A better solution is to drop a bunch of interesting cards on the class in a future expansion and see how it shakes out.

Quote from Excellent20 >>

I've played hundreds of games and still haven't gotten the dust to rock with most of the top tier meta. "I don't expect players to take more than 300 games" is a very surprising statement. Can you explain further?

@mayatola:

Totally agree.  It takes a lot of time spent playing to get to legend even if one is fully consistent and has the 60%+ win rate of a pro.  Playing more marginally just makes it that much more time-consuming, and the variance along the way (with accompanying rises and falls in rank) are enough to discourage many players who might otherwise be able to do so.

Quote from On3_M4n_Army >>

I'm having a super hard time reaching legend this season. Went from rank 2 to rank 5 like two times already. Currently rank 3.

Quote from DiamondDM13 >>

Quote from 1xbenx1 >>

 This is a fallacious argument. A bot can play infinite games. A human can not.

 A Bot cannot play infinite games, there is a limited amount of time the bot can use to play, meaning a finite number of games it can play.

Quote from GrandPatzer >>

 Or the one with the more luck.